Played a show a couple of weeks ago and had a punk band ask to borrow a bass amp since some "sound guy" blew their bassist's amp head at their last show. We let them use our 4-channel mixer and a cab as a replacement.

The show goes great and at the next band practice what happens? We find out 2 out of the 4 channels were blown on the mixer. (Also forgot $100 worth of extension cables out of drunken stupidity.)

I guess that's our fault for letting them use our gear after their previous incidents, but we are nice dudes and want to make a good impression, since we're a younger band and that was our first time playing at that local venue.

So I guess in summary, what are some of your guys' rule of thumb on letting bands use your gear?

Well for a start I'd never let anyone play bass directly through my PA unless I was controlling it. Think the mixer is bad? Check out your speaker cones buddy.

I hope you know by now that it is highly unlikely that the sound guy blew their bass amp up. More likely the bass player did it himself either by playing too loud, or hooking it up incorrectly.

In terms of lending gear, I only lend stuff to people know will treat it well, and usually only gear that is inherently robust. It's a pity you guys didn't lend them a bass amp, because they're generally pretty tough.

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And no, Guitar Hero will not help. Even on expert. Really.Soundcloud

Yeahh, I'm aware that it was probably the bassist, and not the sound guy. That's why I put sound guy in quotations. :P

We had a bass amp, but it's like 2 grand for the head and cab, and it's not ours so that was kind of off limits.

I guess we just let them use it cause we were trying to make a good impression, as they were older than us, and have played there before. They ended up being quite terrible. :p So like you guys said, I'll probably make sure I know the people and watch how they treat their own gear.

I usually insist on playing shows using my own gear, since I don't own a distortion pedal and you never know what kind of amp the other bands are using - I'd be screwed if I showed up and found myself having to play a show with an ultra-clean model. Due to logistics, this sometimes means I have to offer to share my amp with another band.
When that's the case, I always insist on giving the other guitarists a tutorial - don't turn the volume up beyond this point, here's how the channel switcher works, and above all, here is the standby switch and off switch - don't touch these or I will hurt you.
Thus far, I've had no problems. But should the day come where somebody is being careless before the gig begins, I have no problem telling them that they're going to have to figure out an alternative come showtime. I'm not risking expensive repairs for some guy I don't know.

On a related note, how hard is it to blow up an amp? I'm sure if I cranked mine up to 10 and left it there for a long period of time it would hurt the speaker, but seriously my Mesa is way too loud by the time it gets to half way. For larger venues I'll have it mic'd up too, and turning the amp too loud causes all sorts of sound issues.

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And no, Guitar Hero will not help. Even on expert. Really.Soundcloud

I usually insist on playing shows using my own gear, since I don't own a distortion pedal and you never know what kind of amp the other bands are using - I'd be screwed if I showed up and found myself having to play a show with an ultra-clean model. Due to logistics, this sometimes means I have to offer to share my amp with another band.
When that's the case, I always insist on giving the other guitarists a tutorial - don't turn the volume up beyond this point, here's how the channel switcher works, and above all, here is the standby switch and off switch - don't touch these or I will hurt you.
Thus far, I've had no problems. But should the day come where somebody is being careless before the gig begins, I have no problem telling them that they're going to have to figure out an alternative come showtime. I'm not risking expensive repairs for some guy I don't know.

I like that a lot, because then they know what they're getting themselves into before instead of just hoping they don't blow it.

I laughed at the not lending it to a punk band, but it is kinda true. :P They were all about being as loud as possible at the time.

And Alan, I have no idea haha. I never have and never plan on blowing up an amp. I like to think I know when it's too loud. :P

On a related note, how hard is it to blow up an amp? I'm sure if I cranked mine up to 10 and left it there for a long period of time it would hurt the speaker, but seriously my Mesa is way too loud by the time it gets to half way. For larger venues I'll have it mic'd up too, and turning the amp too loud causes all sorts of sound issues.

Pretty damn hard to blow it out - I don't think I've ever done it. But when the day comes that it happens, at least it will be my fault, and I won't be kicking myself for letting some shmuck who doesn't know a tube from a transistor futz around with it unsupervised.

^^^ I agree it's hard to blow it up. But sometimes you encounter someone whom has not encountered a head/cab combo, so if that's the case with your gear, set it up for them.

HORROR STORY

I was in this band where the bassist was either very reliant on the use of other people's gear, or insistent not to use her own. Either way if there was the slightest chance she could use other people's gear, she'd go for it.

One local venue was generous enough to pay a little over $100/hour for original sets, and if you played longer, the hourly price got higher. You also got racked up with free drinks and food. Not a bad gig for an originals band.

As part of the venue's generosity, the manager, a budding muso himself, would let bands use his bass rig. A head/cab combo. Oh oh.

You'd expect that a bass player with at least 10 years experience would know how to hook one up, or at least on a more basic level, if you didn't know, you'd ask the owner. The owner who is the manager, in the same room.

So I'm sitting on the venue toilet and this sound goes off like a fog horn. A really long, long, long fog horn before abrupt silence. Forced the crap out of me, literally speaking.

I rush out and don't even ask what's happened, as I already know. The bass amp is making that noise, and we are screwed. The bass player is looking at me wide eyed asking what she did wrong. So I lean over the back of the amp as the manager worriedly runs towards the stage.

The bass amp is hooked up wrong. One of the head's speaker outs is going into the cab. All good. Then there is a SECOND lead going from the speaker into the EQ out of the head. BOOM.

The head no longer works and we have to put the bass through the PA (it can be done if you know what you are doing). The head is done for. We get paid half as much and never get invited back.

Bass player quit soon after that. Took us 2 years to get back in the good books with the venue. Pretty crap.

If you think what she did was bad, the way it was handled was even worse. The venue manager, was obviously upset and angry. In this circumstance she "should" have said "let me get it repaired, I will cover the costs". But instead (I'll never forget this) she said "oh tell me if there's anything I can do for you" and he shook his head.

I understand that the "anything I can do for you" phrase "may" have meant the same thing but that's more like a sympathy phrase than an actual "I will pay" phrase. What I mean to say is that saying "if there's anything I can do" is the type of thing you say after someone breaks up with someone or if someone dies, rather than crashing their car. There's no intention in the phrase that you're going to pay.

Basically it was handled really badly. Haven't seen that bass amp at the venue since.

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And no, Guitar Hero will not help. Even on expert. Really.Soundcloud

You don't have any obligation to lend your gear to other bands. It's completely unprofessional of the other band to have turned up to the gig without the appropriate gear and then expect to borrow your stuff.

Lending gear has so many risks. Its amazing how the one time gear will stop working just happens to be the time you let someone borrow it. It's happened to my band too. When I play a gig I have no expectation that other bands will let me borrow their gear. If my guitar amp fails on the day of a gig I will bring another amp or I will borrow the bassist's guitar amp. If I didn't have a spare amp and couldn't borrow one from a friend I would hire one from a music shop. I would never expect to borrow another band's gear. You should never feel guilty about not lending your gear to another band.

If you do decide to lend your gear to someone it's a good idea to set it up for them and then tell them not to change any of the settings.

I let a guy in a friend's band borrow my amp, actually, we all let them use our gear, because they didn't expect to play the show and as such had no gear on them. The guy was alright, it was obvious he had no idea what he was doing, cause i told him he could mess with my EQ, but he never touched it. (He plays grunge-style hard rock and I play thrash metal, so I figured he would change it) Obviously, if he had to hook it up it would have been a problem, but it was already hooked up so I didn't mind.

I'll always let other bands use my gear because I've had to borrow multiple times. I would generally just plug it into the cab for the other person and leave them to mess about w/the eq.

The other month, my band got the Megabus to England to okay a couple of shows. Cause of the baggage limit, we were only able to bring guitars with us. Borrowing gear sucks, but sometimes it's necessary.

Lending/borrowing gear is pretty much an inevitability. Jam nights, multi-band nights where the headliners' gear (as much as can be gotten away with anyways) is used as backline for the other bands, etc.

As a general practice, I will let people use my gear if I am in the room supervising it. If I don't know the person and/or have reason to believe there might be a problem, I will be clear and tell them that if I see something I don't like, that I will feel free to fix it for them. (read: crank the sh!t out of my amp or some stupid sh!t like that and I will come up in the middle of your set and turn you down.)

The two easiest ways to blow up an amp are:
- play a bass through a guitar amp at high volumes
- use an instrument cable instead of a speaker cable to connect an amplifier to a speaker enclosure.

CT

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Could I get some more talent in the monitors, please?

My rule on lending gear is the same as lending ANYTHING I own: not gonna ****ing happen unless I get some form of insurance. I will NEVER loan money to anyone, if I loan a guitar, they're going to sign a contract or give me some money to hold on to, just in case :l

Hell, I don't even like to let people touch my things when I'm near them, if someone doesn't like it, they can **** right off, might seem a bit selfish, but I've never had to deal with people messing up something I own :P

If it were a show situation, I wouldn't care to let people use amps, do whatever you want to the EQ and shit, I always change my EQ by ear each time I play. There's not much risk. Same with a guitar, as long as you're careful and I'm watching, but as soon as someone does something sketchy, bumps it or anything, game over.